Appeal to the eye starts with clarity. Once things are clear, there's always room for decoration/color/typography, user options etc.

Quote:

Originally Posted by colicoid

There are other things to consider, besides avoiding allusion.

No need at all to avoid allusion (perhaps a misunderstanding there ?) but allusions bought at the cost of increased noise and clutter do not improve appeal to the eye. What is more, they reduce focus and productivity in an app which is marketed for focus and productivity.

Quote:

Apple has made full circle a couple of times here

Well, there have been some decorative undulations, but the deeper and more important story of its clarity is far from circular.

As the resolution and contrast range of displays improved, the clarity (visibility of data divided by effort imposed on the eye) was gradually improved at each stage by:

Removing redundant edges,

and reserving higher contrasts for graduated foregrounding.

I think we would all share the goals you set out:

Appeal to the eye,

a refresh of a look which has flaws that have grown more visible with time,

and a consistent experience across devices.

but at the moment:

It doesn't have the quality of color and finish of the iPad version,

it doesn't bring the visual relief of something cleaned up and repainted (it's cluttered and gray),

and it doesn't have the same friction-free optimisation for its medium as the iPad version.

In other words it's relying for coherence on some visual allusions (cluttering and noise-importing allusions, as it happens) instead of aiming for a coherent and recognisable excellence in visual clarity across all the apps and devices.

(As for the sidebar icons, there's discussion elsewhere – it's not just that they are noisy and cluttering – clarity has been lost by removing their function as status indicators, forcing the eye to scan across and match up with another icon to the right of the text. A symptom, if you like, of not attending to the minimisation of visual effort.

One thing that the eye does not find appealing is unnecessary work :-)